Chad Kleitsch

Chad Kleitsch was born and raised in New Jersey. He earned his B.A. in photography at Bard College in New York in 1991. He has since lectured at Bard College, Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. He has lead classes in photography at several colleges and art centers, such as Bard College, Simons Rock, Woodstock Center for Photography and LaGuardia College.

Chad Kleitsch's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States such as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum CT, CCS Bard Hessel Collection NY, The Center for Photography at Woodstock NY, Berkshire Museum MA, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art NY, Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery NYC, Yancy Richardson Gallery NYC and Carrie Haddad Gallery Hudson NY. In 2010 he received The Center for Photography Woodstock Photographers Fellowship Fund Award Fellowship.
His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Time Magazine, Money Magazine, Chronogram, and The Mountain Record.

Leaves: White Series

Fabric

works on paper

I take original documents - letters, found paper, postcards, recipes - and treat them as film by back lighting them during a digital scanning process called "scanography". The images are then printed on archival German ink jet paper at an exhibition size of 40x50 inches.
The project utilizes the archives from the New York Public Library. Starting in September 2005, I began scanning works from the original manuscripts archives of The Pforzheimer Collection of Shelly and his Circle as well as The Berg Collection. The first piece I select for scanning was, appropriately, a poem by Byron because William Henry Fox Talbot used a somewhat similar process, in 1840, and made a photogram with a Byron poem. Then onto Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, e.e. Cummings, Jack Kerouac, John Cage among other great works of literature. Needless to say, there is an incredible amount of exciting material to work with and I envision this as an ongoing series.

Lights

The depiction of light in photography has been it’s constant. With the introduction of digital imaging the definitions of traditional photography have blurred and transformed. This work questions the current issues of image process, print medium and the progressively confusing debate between real or “computer generated” images.

These images draw references from classic depictions of light through art history, from a carved sun on Egyptian temple to a Frederic Church sunset or Gerhard Richter’s Candle paintings. This work also makes references to the spectrum of popular mass media such as the contemporary films 2001: A space Odyssey and Close encounters of the Third Kind as well to the generic theatrical light show at a concert or public event.

Images depicting light(s) are often the vessel for many generations to fill with their own conscious and unconscious needs. They stir up several basic human emotions, often asking questions relating to an original source or beginning.

These computer-generated images of light sources ask the same questions but pointed toward the issues of what is photography depicting now in a Photoshop world. Is it real or computer generated- does it matter anymore and is the message of light still the same.

Lost and Found: Ellis Island

A photographic essay on institutional islands around New York City

Have you ever had to go into a lost and found box searching for your lost item? First comes the sudden fear of it being lost. Next there is the frustration about the carelessness that brought you into this situation. Last, there is the anxious hope of perhaps finding it, and all along a deep understanding that it all depends upon the slight chance that someone was kind enough to take the time to return it. Imagine being that lost item, waiting to be found, to be cared for and used again.

These were some of the feelings that I felt as I explored Ellis Island back in 1993-94. I was fortunate enough to be able to explore Ellis under the guidance of National Park Ranger, Kevin Daily. Together we explored the restricted areas of the grounds outside of the museum that are located on the southern part of the island. We made our way room by room. In many of these I would find small personal items left behind. As I moved through the buildings my guide would inform me of the function of each item or perhaps a story that accompanied it.

It was painful to hear of the awful circumstances that tens of thousands of people went through to get into this country. Often people were just sent back or held in isolation wards if they were suspected of illness. People who died on the island often ended up in the Ellis operating theater to be dissected for NYU medical students. Sometimes, even young children ended up in these situations. There are many stories, and I suggest you go to the museum yourself and find your own.

Through these photographs I found some stories that had been lost and brought them out of the dark to where they can be remembered and appreciated. Some of them are painful to see but that is all we are doing is seeing. Imagine being the immigrants who experienced it.

Asylum

A photographic essay of abandoned 19th century psychiatric hospitals

There are new chain link fences that surround these old mental institutions. But these fences are not there to contain what once lived inside. They are there to protect these lost souls from what is outside.

Located high on a hill overlooking all of Middleton, Connecticut is ConnecticutValleyHospital, one of the first mental institutions constructed in the United States in 1886. The facilities buildings range in age from 40 to 130 years old. Some of the older buildings have been slated for renovation and others for demolition. I was invited to document these places before they were lost.

Before I started this project, I thought it would be a great adventure to explore these old and eerie abandoned mental hospitals. After I had spent several days photographing I began to feel that these places had a lot to teach me. When I am in these places I have learned to quiet my mind, my own idea of what this is, and as clearly and compassionately as possible see what these buildings have to say.

This project has opened my life to a topic that I assumed I understood - mental illness. My re-education lead me to feel and see the legacy of ignorance and presumption that caused further suffering for those seeking refuge from their already difficult lives. These places are a 130 year old statement of how the mentally ill were treated in the past and yet these spaces would not be unfamiliar to a patient today.

White Box

Working in various capacities in art museums over the years, I experienced a side of institutional space that the public rarely sees. The techniques and processes of display are purposely made invisible to the public, heightening the aura of exclusivity that exists in the “white box” of the museum galleries.

In 2001 I began to ask museums for free access with my camera during exhibition changes, initiating a project that has now encompassed over fifteen museums, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Menil Collection and The Hammer Museum. These photographs reveal the complex relationship between art and the space in which it is presented, lifting a curtain on a provisional environment where institutional hierarchy is missing or turned upside down; where the division between art and the circumstances of its presentation is blurred; and where the installation processes themselves are aestheticized.

In the recent past a number of photographers have been drawn to the spaces that display art as subject matter, including Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, Sherrie Levine and Louise Lawler. The work of these artists differs from my essay, however, in that the subject matter is either the sociology of the museum environment (Struth and Höfer) or institutional critique (Levine/Lawler). By making the viewer focus on the raw nature of the exhibition process, these photographs defuse the aura that surrounds the rarefied atmosphere of formal display, making us understand that art and the circumstances of its presentation are not mutually exclusive.

Established in 1991, Carrie Haddad Gallery represents mid-career and emerging artists of the Hudson Valley and beyond working in painting, sculpture, mixed media and photography. We organize 7 group exhibits per year in a 3000 square foot gallery space on Hudson's Warren Street.